George Robinson @ Viking/Collector's Workshop. He owns the Haenchen material.

Julie

Julie:

What is the date for the first production of the Haenchen box?

Louis Histed's Milk Trick predates the Chinese Pagoda. These go back to the 1930's, but neither the dates nor the descriptions of them are given in the Magic of Louis S. Histed. The date of the Histed book is 1947.

Some of this material may have been published earlier than that in Abra.

Posted: Oct 10, 2009 5:00pm
Too late for me to edit the previous post -- the date of the Chinese Pagoda, as well as the description are given in the section about "The Crystal Cylinder." The date of the Chinese Pagoda is given as "about 1930." The Milk Trick, which was developed from it it, was described in Masterpieces of Magic volume 1.

Sorry guys, I will have to defer to George Robinson on this one.

To the best of my memory the dates were fuzzy with George, but he felt the Haenchen application coming before Histed's as a definite possibility...

According to Masterpieces of Magic Vol. 1 both THE MILK TRICK and THE CHINESE PAGODA were actually performed in 1932.

In Masterpieces it is stated " The trick is an application of the background masking principle, and probably the initial idea of the apparatus (referencing THE CHINESE PAGODA) developed from the three fold screen. It was constructed experimentally in 1930 and appeared to afford the first full use of "black art" at close quarters under ordinary lighting conditions."

Julie

Fred really made some nice things. I had one of his "Plate Restored" sets.

His wife was very proud of the dollhouses he built. She pointed out to me that they had real fences. He turned the posts on all of these himself.